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I remember hearing about the sea captain, one winter in the 1800s, who sat at a kitchen table with a stopwatch and a thermometer and farmer's matches and came up with the # of BTUs entailed in the phase changes of ice/water. Can anyone recall his name? I looked on the net but had no luck finding him. Thanks.

Don't know the history of the BTU, but my Grandfather cut ice from the Great Lakes and stored underground for delivery. My Dad was a fridgy for 30+ years, I was born with freon in my blood, accounts for my depleted grey matter and receding hairline. I would hope we've risen above the old seaman's calculation on that stormy night.
Maybe not though, all the people confused by the principles behind the removal of heat from where it does matter to someplace where it does'nt matter will always pay!

When will North America embrace the Metric system? Makes sense for the whole world to use units derived from the decimal point instead of archaic standard measurements like the inch, foot, yard. Or oz. lb. ton.
Canada made a move to match the world 25+ years ago, and the Ewe's Ass still clings to ye olde measurement system.
What's up wid dat!

It was big business here in New England. They used to get saw dust from the saw mills and pack it around the ice for insulation. It was put on trains and taken to New York City. Some made it as far as South America.

Then you boys came along with your freezone machines, like you were Home Depot. And ruined an entire industry.

Neat site Noel. Amazing how far (debatable) we've come in less than a century. Interesting thing in Canada is that all the weather forecasts and like are in celsius yet the fridgy's still talk in fahrenheit. Blueprints in most cases are laid out in standard inch/ft. scale (they tried using metric for a while) but did'nt last long. Yet most other measurements are done in metric- kilometres,grams, litres etc.

Originally posted by The Penguin I think that would be Sears Roebuck and co (i think) eh?

Yes. The point is not to let history repeat itself in our own situation. Because Home Depot or Ebay is selling stuff direct to our customers we just have to be aware that things are changing and we have to change too. We can grumble about it or we can enbrace the new oppurtunities.